MBASIC - Successors To MBASIC

Successors To MBASIC

Microsoft also sold a CP/M BASIC compiler (known as BASCOM) which used a similar source language to MBASIC. A program debugged under MBASIC could be compiled with BASCOM. Since program text was no longer in memory and the run-time elements of the compiler were smaller than the interpreter, more memory was available for user data. Speed of program execution increased by 8 to 10 fold.

All the functions of CP/M MBASIC were available in the IBM PC disk-based BASICA or GWBASIC which made migration of programs from CP/M systems to PC-compatibles possible. The tokens used to represent keywords were different, so CP/M programs had to be saved in ASCII source form. Typically screen formatting escape sequences put into the CP/M version would be replaced with the cursor positioning commands found in the PC versions of BASIC, otherwise little rewriting would be needed.